At Virginia City’s Comstock History Center, a single locomotive can open a much larger story. Virginia & Truckee No. 27 links Nevada’s mining districts with the transportation needed to sustain them. The railway began operating in 1869 during the Comstock boom. Its usefulness ran in both directions: mining communities needed materials and services brought in, while the products of the district needed a connection to other markets. The preserved engine gives that economic relationship a physical presence.
Baldwin Locomotive Works built No. 27 in 1913. It was a standard-gauge steam locomotive, and it was the last engine the Virginia & Truckee ordered new. That makes it an interesting representative of the railroad’s later years rather than an engine from the very beginning of the silver boom. It also has a special place at the end of the company’s original history: No. 27 hauled its final regular revenue train on May 31, 1950. A surviving photograph records a crowd gathering in Reno as the train arrived.
The engine’s retirement did not end its story. It was stored after the railroad was abandoned and later underwent cosmetic restoration. Its National Register documentation records its preparation for indoor display at the Comstock History Center in 2005. Cosmetic restoration here means that the locomotive was prepared as a historic object to look at and learn from. It should not be confused with work intended to return a steam engine to operation.
Look at the engine as evidence of a particular railroad and its changing fortunes. A date on a builder’s plate, a photograph of the final train and the machine itself can together show more than any one of those things on its own. The center’s focus differs from a trip on a modern heritage train: its attraction is the chance to see an original locomotive associated with the end of the historic Virginia & Truckee.
Visitor information
Researched November 2026.
Sources
More railroad museums in Nevada
- Nevada Northern Railway Museum — Ely: Operating railroad museum and historic shop complex
- Nevada State Railroad Museum Boulder City — Boulder City: Railroad museum and operating collection
- Nevada State Railroad Museum Carson City — Carson City: Major railroad museum and operating collection
- Sparks Museum & Cultural Center — Railroad Collection — Sparks: Regional museum with railroad collection
- All 5 railroad museums and sites in Nevada
Keep exploring
- All heritage sites — museums, stations and landmarks
- Mountain West — the trains you can ride in the region